Exhuming No-Contact Grief, Planting Seeds for Trans Joy

CW: mention of narcissistic abuse

December 14th, 2021 was my 5 year anniversary of my first testosterone shot.

I knew on December 14th, 2016 that the Christmas I had with my family that year would

probably be the last one. By the time I had come to that moment, as the plunger to the

syringe containing my first dose of life saving testosterone descended, I had already

gone through at least four unsuccessful attempts at coming out to them as some kind of

not-cisgender, not-heterosexual. I was nearly 24. I’d gotten an engineering degree; I’d

begun my first career as a microbiologist, and I was living on my own and paying all my

own bills, despite their resistance to let me get my own apartment, after a year of

working as a scientist.

There was a part of me that hoped, once I came out, that my parents would give up the

fight of trying to cram me into the “heterosexual woman” box and take a moment to say,

“well, I guess that doesn’t fit our child. Maybe we should see what form they actually

take?”

Some families do. Some parents realize their mistake and change course. Mine, last I

checked, still have not had that moment to this day.

"The Holidays" have always been complicated for me. December was usually the time

that I was most trapped with my narcissistic* family. As I came into adolescence and

began discovering myself, and my queerness became more apparent, my role as the

scapegoat solidified.

Growing up queer, in a conservative, abusive household, I never had the experience of

Christmas being a time of childlike joy. I was not excited or relieved to be out of school.

Not being in school meant being home, where I was vigilantly watched at all times for

signs of deviation from the norm, and the privacy of my journals was constantly at risk of

being violated. Presents seemed to always come with the threat, “You better not

embarrass me after all I’ve given you.” All memories of positive shared moments with

family were darkened by a sinister vignette of “You know they don’t love the real you,

right?”

***

After I broke up with my non-affirming family, my new freedom did not breathe life into

my stunted Christmas cheer – and now there was grief on top of the absence of happy

childhood memories. For the first few years, that grief was a gaping, ever aching wound

that seemed to split open further each December. I was now cut off from my entire

biological family. My dad and I would never make up for lost “male-bonding” time; my

mom would never tell folks at church how proud she is of her sons. I wouldn’t be able to

be there for my little brother as he was coming into adulthood right behind me. I had no

way to contact any grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. I had entirely severed

myself from my family tree and I felt how rootless I was.

It was 2018 before I thought I might have a chance at enjoying the holidays. I had been

doing drag for a year at that point, and I had discovered the Christmas Gays™, the kids

that grew up with supportive parents and a fondness for red with white trim in

December. I don’t think I ever fully got into it, but I finally had a reason to crack a smile

when I heard Mariah Carrie. And, I’d been absorbed into my best

friend/roommate/platonic domestic partner’s family, so I had a family Christmas to

attend that made me feel like, maybe, even I could have those Hallmark movie

Christmases. Her family gatherings felt like a kind of love I had never experienced while

spending time with my family. It was loud with rambunctious children and opinionated

aunts and senile grandparents, with tispy uncles and the laugher of cousins who’d

grown up together. There were awkward moments with distant relatives coming up to

us, taking our hands to look in our eyes and say, “You know, it breaks my heart you felt

so alone. We’re here to support you. We’re here to love you.”

It was nice while it lasted.

2020 hit, and large gatherings were put to a halt (as they should have been). December

was just December. I was working both at Starbucks and as a massage therapist, and

honestly, 2020 had brought enough new trauma that I simply didn’t have bandwidth to

even think about old trauma. It was honestly a relief to focus on surviving the moment.

Now here we are, on the 5th anniversary of my first testosterone shot, and it’s another

year of “December is just December.” It doesn’t hurt; it’s not scary. It’s spacious even–

it allows me room to fill my heart with the Triangle Wellness Collective. But, I haven’t

forgotten what it felt like to ache for a reason to have holiday cheer.

I want to make it known that I hold so much appreciation for my queerness for giving me

a reason to believe there has to be something better out there. And I have so much

tender love, so much admiration for the brave, beardless, unaffirmed 23 year old that

stuck in that first testosterone shot 5 years ago today.

So, if you find yourself feeling renewed tenderness from wounds cut open in the month

of December, I want you to know that you’re not alone, and if you find a way to survive

long enough to get away from those who held the knife, eventually those wounds will

stitch themselves back together and that wound will heal. Perhaps there will be

numbness in place of the pain, perhaps your healing journey will take a different turn

than mine and you’ll find that elusive holiday cheer. But, it will eventually stop hurting,

and the other 11 months of the year will have the chance to become deliciously

saturated with color in ways you can’t even imagine yet.

***

*I use the term narcissistic to describe my family after half a decade of trying to figure

out what the heck happened to me, certainly not flippantly

About Andy Prescott:

Andy (he/him) is a queer, polyamorous, proudly effeminate, witchcraft dabbling, transgender man. Andy has two cats, Hades and Persephone, and enjoys running Triangle Wellness Collective, and finding new ways to live like his Stardew Valley farm in his midwest suburban apartment.

Leshachikha  Description The goddess Leshachikha, in Slavic pagan folklore, is said by some to have died in October and magically revived in the spring. She's traditionally the wife of the Leshy, the Slavic forest god. Just as one can in a forest, it

Leshachikha

The goddess Leshachikha, in Slavic pagan folklore, is said by some to have died in October and magically revived in the spring. She's traditionally the wife of the Leshy, the Slavic forest god. Just as one can in a forest, it's easy to get lost in another person. That's a burial of sorts that no one, sometimes not even the one who's lost themselves, may ever know about—unless they manage to find themselves again and reawaken. Meanwhile, their magic may lie dormant, though its influence never entirely goes away. To find the path back, you have to relearn to listen to yourself, to follow the thinnest thread of intuition and hear what your inner voice already knows.

About Margaret Schneider

I’m a third-generation artist, writer, and musician, reclaiming my maternal Russian-Ukrainian heritage, reconnecting with ancestral traditions, and makount at https://www.instagram.com/scaredcicada/ing reparations for ancestral harms. My spiritual and artistic practices are intuitive, including practice of divination via everyday omens, tarot, stichomancy, scrying, and dream states.

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More of my photography, artwork, and divination can be seen on my Instagram acc